iAdjunct

"Idiocracy" is effectively a movie about this very subject.

@RonMaupin Maybe not, but I'm sure many users on this site have significant knowledge of how ARP works and behaviors will/won't break it. Knowing the behavior, you should be able to answer those questions - even if they are answered conditionally. Since ARP is not a "speculative, proprietary, or future" protocol, knowing its behavior is something within the scope of this site.

@RonMaupin Answers conditional to the missing variable (what the switch does) both answer the question and provide a learning opportunity for the poster. Simply stating that the question is too broad and cannot be answered provides neither.

@RonMaupin "It is not my job to fix your question to fit the rules of SE and NE." No, but as a moderator, it is your self-imposed responsibility to make SE a useful site for all who visit. Your response was one of the most unproductive responses you could have had: "no, not this rock, bring me a different rock." workingsmarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/12/…

@RonMaupin That finds the single piece of missing information and answers the question anyway for both situations, leading to a more productive interaction.

@RonMaupin How do you think things would have been different if an answer had been posted "Devices responding to ARP requests will reply to the MAC address in the Layer3 ARP payload, and the behavior of that would be dependent upon the behavior of the switch. If the switch doesn't recognize the original address, then the ARP response will be lost and ARP won't work"?

@RonMaupin How much different do you think SE would be if you (and others) would attempt to elicit missing information instead of declaring that information is missing?

@RonMaupin There have been several possible ways to respond to this. The one you've chosen is "You're not providing enough information." How do you think this would have been different had you asked "What does the switch do if a packet is sent to the original address?"? What about "We don't know what the switch does if a packet is sent to the original address?"?

@CortAmmon I recommend posting your answer.

@RonMaupin The question was not about a switch, it was about the effect of a modified on an ARP packet. Without mentioning the switch - custom-made or not - as context, the response from people like you would have been "what switch does this" or "why don't you do this other thing instead," neither of which are useful to the question. I've been down that road before, so I attempted to provide context.

@RonMaupin My question literally included this information. It specified in the first line that it was editing the Layer-2 information, and showed in the example that only the Layer-2 information was modified. The question was, as already stated, whether this would break things.

@RonMaupin Your behavior, and the behavior of those like you, make SE worthless for any question not trivially-answerable by drive-by commenters/flaggers. Within two hours of posting, this had two up-votes and one star; clearly they saw something in it you didn't.

@ronmaupin This is not related to a switch, this is related to the protocol itself and its handling.

You might want to start with the fact that your job is on the internet, because until that line you sound like somebody complaining about a slow connection because you just want to watch Netflix and get on Facebook (or StackExchange).

The real underlying question which will affect this: is it OK if he comes across as weird, using the wrong words/phrases for things? The same as if you came to New York City from England and kept calling underpasses "subways," confusing the heck out of the natives. If you want him to speak their dialect perfectly, you'll limit yourself; but if it's OK that he comes across as a weird foreigner who uses all the wrong words but can still talk to them, then that's a different thing altogether.

Yes - other English Dialects, such as different parts of the country or dealing with non-native-English-speakers or the Americas.

How much is this person used to dealing with other dialects of English?

And has this person gotten hooked on Pokémon Go? If so, he's in for a rude awakening.

Does your society make movies about dystopian societies like we do? Would their movies include the savage people who engage in competition?

What do their movies about utopian societies look like?